On “SEP presidential candidate speaks to Ford Canada workers”
These two-tier wages seem reminiscent of the old labor system in the semi-feudal South. There black and white workers were separated by a wage gulf, which served both to keep white workers on edge by keeping a force willing to work for less around, and to keep black workers desperate through poverty. The creation of this artificial class within a class is transparent to me, and I hope that other workers wake up to it as well. There is only one wage-laboring class and we ought to resist efforts to artificially divide it against itself.
Vance O
25 September 2012
On “Los Angeles workers speak on social crisis”
If this article does not provoke righteous indignation in the reader, then perhaps nothing will. I’ve known about the difficulties facing undocumented immigrants with regards to driving without a license, but to hear it put in plain language by an immigrant, “it is illegal for us to drive a car,” is like being splashed in the face with cold water.
Likewise with the family that is forced to survive on 30 to 40 dollars a day worth of piecework. To put this in perspective, working eight hours a day at minimum wage earns you a little less than 60 dollars a day, one-and-a-half to twice as much. This is a daily reality for millions of people in the United States! And in return for making less than the minimum wage, they are threatened with violence by the police, who are egged on by the human detritus in the corporate media, who identify them with cartels, terrorists, or simply smear them for not speaking the language Our Brave Soldiers fought and died to give us the right to speak. It all makes me want to puke.
Tom A
24 September 2012
On “Attack in Libya disrupted major CIA operation”
Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagoura is surely jesting when he talks about the “sovereignty” of Libya. He and the other traitors gave up sovereignty when they got into bed with the US and NATO.
AM
25 September 2012
On “Unions leading race to bottom for British car workers”
Incisive article which makes clear that any progressive role that the unions in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter, have long since passed and that workers now more than ever need networks of Marxist militants in the workplaces to lead the fight against the levels of super-exploitation that we are now seeing.
The article also makes clear that to expect the TU or the TUC to call a general strike to stop the austerity attacks is just whistling in the wind. The only way that strikes small and large will be called will be through the intervention of Marxist militants who will expose the sabotage of the so-called left leaders.
Dave T
UK
25 September 2012
On “Romney’s ‘47 percent’ video and the bipartisan assault on social reform”
Thanks for an article that provides an excellent overview of who Mitt Romney really is and what he really believes in. In addition to The Jungle, The Octopus, and The History of the Standard Oil Company, WSWS readers may want to pick up Sinclair’s novel Oil. Although it was supposedly the basis for the film There Will Be Blood (an excellent work of art in its own right), the novel is actually quite different. It deals with labor struggles of American workers in the immediate post-World War I era and contains one of the most compelling descriptions of what the October Revolution meant for all workers everywhere including the US, not just in the Soviet Union. The novel also describes efforts by J.P. Morgan which had “privatized” certain formations of the US Army to intervene at Vladivostok in 1918 to not only seize property that legitimately belonged to the Bolshevik government, but also to physically destroy that government and indirectly to aid and abet the slaughter of its supporters by the reactionary Whites.
Sincerely,
Peter L
Connecticut, USA
25 September 2012